Category: Networking

You just completed the installation of your new server. You now have a router in place, probably one of Dell’s SonicWall firewall routers or maybe a TP-Link router. But then you realize that you would like to be able to work from your hotel room or from the coffee store in the neighborhood. But how do you get to your server from outside while there is a firewall in the way?

Thankfully, there is a way to do just that. Well, actually a ton of ways, but we are here going to talk about just one of them: Remote Desktop Connection (or Microsoft Remote Desktop if you are working from a Mac), especially, about the setup to be able to use that program.

This tool enables you to take advantage of terminal services on Windows Servers. You will need to setup your modem and then your router to create a path from the outside world to your server.

Microsoft Windows comes with some interesting features to help manage how computer resources are shared among users using Remote Desktop Services. I first came across this feature on Windows Server 2012 R2 when I noticed that one of my users’ session was, pretty much out of the blue and quite often, disrupted by the server.

Most of the time it takes resetting their connection to the server for them to be able to reconnect and use the server resources–network, storage, or processor, but sometimes just a fresh attempt to reconnect the usual way just works.

To figure out what this was happening, I looked no farther than the log files to find the log message “Remote Desktop Services Network Fair Share was disabled for the user account DOMAIN_NAME\username” in the Event Viewer under Microsoft/Windows/TerminalServices-Remote Connection Manager/Admin.

A solution is suggested by a technet article, but the description is for Windows Server 2008. One has to find the equivalent for Windows Server 2012. The article suggests the following under Fair Share CPU Scheduling.

Fair Share CPU Scheduling is a new feature included with Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2008 R2. Fair Share CPU Scheduling dynamically distributes processor time across sessions based on the number of active sessions and load on those sessions by using the kernel-level scheduling mechanism included with Windows Server 2008 R2. On an RD Session Host server, one user will not affect the performance of another user’s session, even if the RD Session Host server is under a high load.

Fair Share CPU Scheduling is enabled by default. You can disable this feature by configuring the following registry entry to 0:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\SessionManager\DFSS\EnableDFSS .

In Windows 10, once you are connected to the network you want to set to Private,

Start a Windows Explorer window

Click on “Network” among the items listed on the left of the window

If you have disallowed sharing on Public Networks (recommended) and allowed on Private, there should appear a (yellow) warning in the upper part of the Explorer window to remind you that “Network discovery and file sharing is turned off. Network computers and devices are not visible. Click to change…”

Click on the warning

Respond appropriately to the new pop-up asking if you actually want to allow sharing on Public (NO), or change network to a Trusted/Private network.

Select second option to change network to a Private/Trusted one.

Windows 10 Pop-up message to enable network discovery and file sharing on Private Network. A good way to change network from Public to Private

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